


Safe and Happy

by Neelh



Series: Transcendence [2]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Babysitting, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Neurodivergent Grunkle Ford
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 14:53:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8289812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neelh/pseuds/Neelh
Summary: Ford has been left looking after three babies. Who decided that this would be a good idea?Well, Mabel, probably, but that's irrelevant. What is relevant is that they won't stop crying.





	

Stanford Pines would be the first to say that he did not get along very well with small children.

Of course, his brother Stanley would be the first to remind him that he copes perfectly well with Mabel, and she’s basically an oversized small child, but these are _babies_.

He’d left Gravity Falls for fifteen years to explore the post-Transcendence world and when he returned, not only was Mabel married but she had also reproduced with her husband. Which was quite jarring, since the last time he had seen her was when she was a teenager with a demon brother who had just murdered a cult and was laughing like Bill enough to send Ford into a particularly strong flashback.

But enough about that.

Said demon brother was currently out with his sister beating up a cult or something, which Ford would like to observe if Mabel hadn’t explained exactly what something like that would entail. Stanley and Mabel’s husband, Henry, were on a trip to obtain new books for the library. This left Ford alone in the Stan Pines Memorial Library, previously the Mystery Shack, with three babies in a big shared cradle that _wouldn’t stop crying_.

He’d checked their diapers first, and changed them awkwardly, but the babies still wouldn’t stop crying. Acacia was the eldest and the loudest, while the youngest, Willow, was only whining in a repetitive, annoying, high-pitched tone. She stopped every ten seconds precisely to breathe. Hank was at least only screaming occasionally.

Ford had no idea how Mabel coped. Well, she did have a lot of other people helping, but the crying must become tiresome after a while! Nobody showed him how to mute the babies. Even feeding them had only resulted in a tantrum and milk all over Mabel’s eighteenth copy of Twin Souls.

Good riddance. The binding was terrible anyway, and he was getting sick of picking up loose sheets of inappropriate romance novel from off the floor.

He’d tried to hold Hank in his arms during the kid’s quieter phases, but he didn’t know what to do even though Stanley had shown him how to support the baby’s little head and how to bounce them all gently to make them laugh and fall asleep. It felt like he was going to hurt Hank, either by accident or because of his own impulses that had previously ended up with someone shot through the head or knee.

So Ford had had to put Hank back in the cot, and he tried to think of a way to calm down the babies.

His normal calming methods would be useless on infants. No matter how intelligent they might be - and if they’re Pines babies, then Ford knew that they would be incredibly smart babies – tiny infant bodies would not be capable of sustained meditation. Which was a horrific accident of evolution, since other mammals gave birth far later in a baby’s development. But _no_. Thank you, random chances of the universe, for landing Stanford Pines with three woefully underdeveloped foetuses that refuse to stop screaming.

Absently, he drums his fingers on the side of the cot, and the ongoing high-pitched keen that Ford had forgotten came from Willow and not some kind of tinnitus stopped. He stared at the babies. They stare back, silently. He lifts his hand and wiggled each finger, from his pinkie to his thumb.

Acacia giggles.

He wiggles his fingers again, this time in a different pattern from before.

The triplets stare, enthralled.

Mabel made some finger puppets for him when Stanley saved him from the portal, and they were moved into the triplets’ bedroom at some point, so Ford spends a few minutes humming some songs from the filk CD that Fiddleford had purchased for him before he’d left Gravity Falls. That seemed to keep the kids intrigued as he fished out the old knitted puppets.

Dipper had winced when he’d seen them the first time. He doesn’t anymore. Neither does Ford.

On each finger, he slips on the likenesses of his family. Wendy, Soos, Soos’s Abuelita, Fiddleford, and a gnome go on one hand, while Mothman, Waddles, Gompers, Stanley, and Ford himself are placed on the other. On each thumb, immortalised in yarn with little happy faces, are Dipper and Mabel, both with brown eyes and brown hair and completely innocent smiles.

He knows that he’s projecting his emotions onto those finger puppets. Nonetheless, he only takes a moment of time to reflect on his mistakes before crouching behind the back of the cot and revealing each finger puppet one by one. They laugh in delight, and Ford sings some upbeat folk song that he half-remembers from his childhood while the puppets dance from side to side.

At some point, he hears another voice join, and turns his head to see-

It’s his nephew. He knows this. Ford knows that this isn’t Bill, but Dipper, but it always takes a moment for his mind to disconnect Bill from Dipper now, what with all the dapper black-and-gold looks.

It’s pretty terrifying when the blue flames come out. Dipper doesn’t make deals around him anymore.

“You love them, don’t you?” asks Dipper. He shifts into an appearance that looks like if he kept his style sense from when he was twelve, with an orange sweatshirt and grey jeans.

Ford blinks before breaking into a faint smile, at both Dipper’s statement and new appearance. “I suppose I do.”

Dipper stands, carefully keeping both feet on the ground, and smiles down at the triplets in the cradle. Ford stands up a second later, wincing as his joints complain, and looks down at the twins again.

“I’d die for them,” says Ford quietly. “All I want is for them to grow up safe and happy.”

Dipper is quiet, and Ford glances over at him. His eyes are dark and hungry, with black sclerae and golden irises, and for a second Ford feels like he’s been punched in the stomach, like any moment Dipper is going to grin at him with yellow-tinted eyes with elongated pupils and steal those three children from right under Ford’s nose because he’s been tricked by a demon once more in his empty failure of a life.

But instead, Dipper turns to Ford with a weary smile that Ford’s seen on Stanley before, after telling some terrible joke that was never really a joke. “You thought that about Mabel and I too, didn’t you?”

And damn it, Dipper could have torn out Ford’s lower intestine and it wouldn’t hurt this much. Ford had failed at caring for his niblings, and then he just ran off into the weird sunset and he shouldn’t have come back, no really, because he’s only looking after the triplets right now because-

He finds himself with a small sleepy ginger baby in his puppet-covered hands. Well, a particular ginger baby. Dipper has placed Acacia into his arms, and suddenly he feels better, somehow.

“They’re your family, Grunkle Ford,” Dipper says, cradling Hank and Willow. “And they’re babies, and they’re innocent, and they love you. Just, I don’t know, appreciate that, I guess.”

“You understand,” says Ford, and he wants to say something else, but he doesn’t know quite what.

Dipper smiles back. “I guess I do. Wanna take the kids downstairs and introduce them to Space Hike?”

Ford breaks into a grin. “Of course, my boy.”

**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday transcendence au, i guess


End file.
